Prime Factors - Ranking UK Prime Ministers

1.2 - Robert Walpole (Part 2)

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1.2 - Robert Walpole (Part 2)

Episode Transcript

Parliament: Hip hip hooray! Hip hip hooray! Hip hip hooray!

Robert Walpole, Part 2

Abram: Hello and welcome back to Prime Factors. I'm Abram, and I'm here with my dad. We are reviewing all the British prime ministers from Robert Walpole to Rishi Sunak. This episode is 1.2, Robert Walpole Part 2.

Joe: Wow, this has been a lot of fun, and I have grown so much respect for Graham and Ali from Rex Factor, Rob and Jamie from Totalus Rankium, Bry and Fry from Pontifacts, and Ben and Eliza from Battle Royale. I love all you guys. Wow, this research is really a lot of work, and I'm just so really excited to tell Abram the rest of the story of Robert Walpole today.

Abram: Yeah, you spent two months researching both of them combined, so believe him.

Joe: Yeah, I think we got to figure out how to do it faster because, you know, if we're going to do an episode every other week, it's going to be awfully hard if it takes us two months.

Abram: Yes, but this one is the one that you have the most to research, maybe besides Churchill. Yeah. Probably besides Churchill. Yeah, definitely besides Churchill. Yeah.

Joe: Yeah, well, we'll definitely see. I'm looking forward to the rest. You know, as I'm sitting down and doing this, you know, I just have developed such a deep respect for what Totalus Rankium does and how they're able to have all of those little life stories. I don't think I do it quite as well. In fact, Abram, we just got our first review last week. It was by you, and you told me, quote, "It's not as good as Totalus Rankium, but it's okay." So that's what we aim for. We aim for "it's okay," and I think it's okay.

Abram: And this will probably take years to do if we ever complete it. So by the end, we'll probably be so much better than we are now, for anyone listening in the future, like far future.

Joe: God, I hope so. I hope so very much. So we are recording today from a very special place.

Abram: We're recording from Walpole, named after Robert Walpole.

Joe: Walpole, Massachusetts.

Abram: And because we live in Massachusetts and we're in the Walpole Library in the Stone Room.

Joe: Walpole Library in the Stone Room. It's a great library. It's a great little town. We got to see a little bit of it on the drive here, and it just seems so special for us to be recording our Walpole episode in Walpole, Massachusetts, the town named for him at the height of his power. It's pretty awesome. So I just feel this great Walpole energy. Do you feel this Walpole energy?

Abram: I guess.

Joe: You guess? Okay, well, that's good enough. Abram, before we jump in, this is a rating episode. We're not gonna be rating for a while, but do you want to walk us through the rating system again?

Abram: Yeah, we won't be ready for like two hours, but there have been a few things that I should probably mention. Okay, so to start out, it's out of 99.7. So, how much accomplished? We both rate out of 20, which means it's 1 to 40.

Abram: And then here comes two minus categories because we needed to do something minus that wasn't just personality. Minus 1 to 20, which means we both do minus 1 to 10 and combine them. How much de-accomplished? And same, same with how bad their personality was.

Abram: Back to the ones that you get points, and then 1 to 20 of how interesting. Once again, we do the 20 thing. And then plus 1 to 10, how good do they look? This is the one that is a bit weird in how we do it because we do it 1 out of 10 plus 1 out of 10. So it would be 1 out of 20, except we divide by 2. So 1 out of 10.

Abram: Now here comes the ones we can't control. Plus 0 to 9.2 of lifespan because the one who lived the longest died one day before their 93rd birthday. So 9.2. And how much time as prime minister? 0 to 20. Fun fact, Walpole will actually be the only one to get 20. So he'll do very well, I assume.

Joe: Only one to get 20 so far.

Abram: Yes, there could be more.

Joe: There could be, but I don't think—

Abram: Plus there'd probably be like two other prime ministers by the time we finish this. At least one.

Joe: They go through prime ministers pretty quickly sometimes.

Recap Last Week

Joe: All right, so I'm really excited to get to the rating. I'm really excited to talk to you about what's going on with Walpole. So why don't we begin with a recap? Abram, what do you remember from last time?

Abram: He was born on August 6th, 1676, to a wealthy and connected family, but not high in the aristocracy. Initially came to Parliament in 1701, replacing his father. What about the Tory uncle?

Joe: Well, the Tory uncle came later, so—

Abram: Yeah, I remember the Tory uncle, but not him replacing his father as Colonel Robert Walpole, and continued to maintain a seat ever since. Rose quickly through the ranks based off his great speaking ability. That reminds me of James K. Polk. And good judge of character and work with the corruption of the day. There's always corruption. That's why it's the corruption of the day.

Abram: In 1712, the Tory-controlled Parliament put him on trial for corruption and he was thrown to the Tower of London, from which he only grew his Whig bonafides as something of a martyr. Keep in mind, the Tower of London is where a few kings of England died, so. I'm sure since he was rich, it was nowhere like that, because that's what happens when you're rich, though.

Abram: After the death of Queen Anne, the Tories lost power and the Whigs returned with Walpole rising rapidly. He wasn't perfectly well liked. When he joined the ministry of Stanhope and Sunderland, he was on the outs and led a breakaway faction of the Whigs. He reconciled with them only late around 1720. But then the South Sea Bubble hit, and that's where we'll start today.

The South Sea Bubble Continued

Joe: That's great. We are going to rewind a little bit. So just a reminder, Abram, the South Sea Bubble had crippled the British economy.

Abram: Because like everyone was in it.

Joe: Oh yes, everyone was in it, including King George.

Abram: The first.

Joe: The first.

Abram: There are gonna be four of them in a row, so we're gonna be used to saying King George for a while.

Joe: Yeah, while George does—

Abram: Probably like a year.

Joe: George, George.

Abram: George, George, George, George, Will, Victoria.

Joe: Exactly. So the South Sea Bubble had crashed. You saw the graph, it went way down, crashed the British economy, and it made many rich and really want-to-be-rich people, put them into deep debt. It was having a crippling effect on the economy. It was reducing trade.

Joe: You know, what they needed was a hero, someone that would set things right and bring confidence back to the people. Everyone was in shock. They were looking for hope. That's when Walpole came in, and that's when he became the first Prime Minister.

Joe: Now, last time I jumped ahead to when he was given the twin appointments, Chancellor of the Exchequer and the First Lord of the Treasury. He was given them in April 1721, but I want to jump back a couple days, couple years, couple months to see how he did it.

Joe: So Walpole, when he was put in charge, had two goals. He needed to deflect blame, especially from the Whig leadership of the country, and he needed to restore faith in the financial system. And here's a quote. He said, "The House should proceed regularly and calmly, lest by running precipitously into odious inquiries, they should exasperate the distemper to such a degree as to render all remedies ineffectual." I mean, this guy can't talk without using like ten-dollar words.

Abram: Yeah, I was about to say, he really uses so many fancy words. I couldn't understand half of what he says.

Joe: Well, I mean, that's how they talked in the 1700s. But he's also British, which I mean, there's a certain level of pompous involved in just that, right? I'm kidding. Please don't unsubscribe.

Joe: But the point is, what he was saying is, let's not jump into things. Let's figure out what's going on and we'll solve it together carefully. You know, others were calling for immediate acts to punish the South Sea Company, but Walpole wanted calm.

Joe: He devised a plan where the shares of the South Sea Company would be traded for shares of the East India Company and the Bank of England just above market rate. This is a fancy way of saying, you guys won't lose as much money as you thought. Here, we'll trade it for other companies that aren't going to fail. That will give back some money to the people that lost hope. It's going to help reboot the British economy. It's going to be awesome.

Joe: Now, of course, this only works if both the Bank of England and the East India Company will grow at a rate that they had never grown before. But, you know, let's push those problems off for a couple of months, years, maybe forever.

Joe: Now, in order for this to succeed, the bank, Parliament, and the king all had to approve, and that was going to take some time. Meanwhile, the people were still angry. A director of the company named Lambert Blackwell was nearly lynched on the streets of London. Like, people were so angry, they said, "You are the guy who caused us to lose all of our money. Whack, whack, whack!" You know, just kind of being mean.

Joe: So even though Walpole was calling for calm, the rest of Parliament said, "We need to have investigations." Now, really, Walpole probably did like investigations. Walpole always liked investigations, but you know, publicly at least, he was calling for calm.

Joe: And they formed a committee, it was called the Broderick Committee. It started looking at the evidence and for people that committed crimes. Now, Robert Knight, who historian Edward Pearce calls a white-collar criminal, he was a key witness and he was aware of what had gone on. He might have coordinated some of the bribes, some of the shares of stock that was given to government officials. And just before they could arrest him, what did he do? He ran away. Who ran away last time? Was it Bolingbroke? Was it Oxford?

Abram: Sunderland? Was it Sunderland? Stanhope died and Sunderland tried not to be arrested.

Joe: Yeah, somebody— I thought it was Bolingbroke though. He fled to France.

Abram: Well, oh yeah, Bolingbroke fled to France.

Joe: So Robert Knight, that's the guy that they're trying to talk to, he didn't flee to France. He went to some place that has better French fries.

Abram: Belgium.

Joe: Belgium. So King George, at the request of Parliament, issued a proclamation that barred any officers of the South Sea Company from leaving Britain, and he offered a reward for the return of Robert Knight.

Joe: Several South Seas directors were members of Parliament. They were kicked out. Five directors were arrested. But at this point, Walpole, he was in damage control mode, right? He wasn't just about, "I want to find out who did this and punish them." He was in "I wanna make sure that the Whigs stay in power, and I wanna make sure that we restore faith in the government."

Joe: So Robert Walpole did something a little bit funny. He helped to arrange for Robert Knight to not come back to London. He wanted Robert Knight right where he was, where he could not provide the evidence that maybe some of the Whigs that were friends of Robert Walpole might have been in on some of the corruption.

Abram: That's kind of corrupt.

Joe: It's kind of corrupt.

Abram: It's like when you like your friends so much, you give them all the positions in your cabinet in our system, but don't care about the politicians who are actually doing well.

Joe: Yeah, it's a lot like that. So Knight had been arrested at this point. He was being held in a prison in Antwerp.

Abram: Belgium.

Joe: Also Belgium. And Walpole and his faction basically said, please keep him locked up.

Abram: Now, James Stanhope, the Earl Stanhope, the previous First Lord of the Treasury, but currently he was the guy who, like, did the things which caused Walpole to make another faction, right?

Joe: I think so.

Abram: Yeah, he was the other one with Sunderland.

Joe: Yep. So he was currently the Secretary of State for the Northern Department, and he was pushing for Knight's return so that the truth would come out, right? So we basically have another case where it's Walpole versus Stanhope, you know, in order to get to the bottom of this mystery of who was corrupt. And the answer was probably Walpole, really.

Abram: But probably Walpole, almost definitely.

Joe: But the thing is, something bad happened unexpectedly. James Stanhope, in Parliament on February 4th, 1721, he collapsed. He died the next day. What a coincidence. I mean, I don't really think Walpole had anything to do with his death, but it's like, yeah, "we must get to the truth."

Abram: "We must get to the truth." It was probably more like—mine.

Joe: So basically this reduced the pressure to bring Knight back. It also—

Abram: Sunderland still is there, but I think he's trying not to get arrested, so he won't do that much.

Joe: I think so. It also allowed Walpole to arrange for his brother-in-law Townshend. Remember him? So Townshend is going to get Stanhope's job. Stanhope dead, Townshend brother-in-law, now it's all in the family, right? Walpole pretty much controls— well, he controls quite a lot.

Joe: So although Walpole didn't support the committee doing the investigating publicly, he played it like a fiddle to make sure that the leaders in Parliament that he wanted to be punished were punished, and the leaders in Parliament that he didn't want to be punished— well, they weren't punished. He was basically called like the screener-in-chief. I guess that was a word that they used at the time to say—

Abram: Sounds fancy, like Walpole.

Joe: Sounds fancy, like Walpole. Basically, the idea is he's protecting his people and punishing the people that aren't his.

Joe: And one of the people that he was protecting was a different Stanhope, Charles Stanhope, the cousin of James Stanhope, the Earl Stanhope. He was investigated for bribery, but Walpole pulled some strings and made sure that, you know, the shares that he had personally bought for Walpole weren't part of the investigation. You know, that kind of stuff. He was a former paymaster for Walpole, so he was very much involved in Walpole's personal finances.

Joe: But for some reason, Walpole did go after this guy called John Aislabie. I don't even know if I'm pronouncing his name right, but he was the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Walpole found things, or this committee rather, possibly with some pushing by Walpole, found things that he was doing wrong, so he was out. So this basically gave Walpole the opportunity to take his job personally.

Joe: Now, at this point, another person, the Secretary of State for the Southern Department, his name was James Craggs the Younger, he was also pushing for Knight to return, but guess what happened to him?

Abram: "We must have—" like—

Joe: Pretty much, "we must have the truth." He died of smallpox, and his father— and this is sad— his father, who had lost actually a fortune in the South Sea Company, he died of probably suicide a month later.

Joe: So, you know, "we must get to the—" ah, certainly not claiming like Walpole arranged for him to die of smallpox, but Walpole had to have been like counting his blessings every time one of the people that were investigating this just keeled over and died.

Abram: Yeah, Walpole's really lucky.

Joe: He is, uh, very, very lucky.

Abram: Let's see if he'll continue to be lucky.

Joe: Yep. So at this point, Walpole now has an open spot for the Chancellor of the Exchequer. So Sunderland resigned as First Lord of the Treasury, giving that job back to Walpole.

Joe: Of course, Sunderland wasn't actually investigated. Did Sunderland, like, have a deal with him that he would give him a job if he wasn't investigated? I don't know, probably not. But one way or another, Walpole has basically gotten all of the power in government right now.

Abram: So if you remember, Sunderland was the guy working with Stanhope against Walpole. Stanhope was the main one, but Sunderland was also doing it.

Joe: Yes. So the new Secretary of State for the Southern Department is going to be this guy called John Carteret. He's going to be appearing in our story and then Compton's story and then a couple of other times. So, you know, keep him in mind, but you don't need a pin because he never becomes a prime minister.

Abram: Yeah, also speaking of that, we are including disputed prime ministers in the podcast. So if there are any that became prime minister but couldn't form a government, we— like, more episodes, more episodes better. So they'll also be counted because they technically were sort of prime minister. So, or attempted to form a government. So we're going to be counting them too.

Joe: More episodes the better, huh? I guess I better learn to research faster.

Abram: Definitely. You are being super duper slow.

Joe: You're giving away all my secrets, Abram.

Abram: I know.

Joe: All right, well, back in Belgium, Robert Knight was still a prisoner. Some of the government wanted him to return to England, as we've already said. And Walpole and others just wanted him locked up far away from England.

Joe: And this is when we get a very special message from King George. Quote, "Pleased to express the wish that Your Excellency should order the government of Antwerp Citadel to enlarge Knight from confinement, allowing him not only to have liberty to walk on the citadel, but also to escape."

Joe: Also, if this was King George I, this is probably all of this in German. I don't know if he said that in German, but he probably said it in a German accent. But I didn't really want to try a German accent because he didn't know how to speak English.

Abram: So I assume he said it and then someone— and then a translator wrote it.

Joe: It could be. I think he did know some English, but he didn't like to speak it in public. This is something we should look up.

Abram: It wasn't his main language.

Joe: It definitely wasn't his main language.

Abram: German. He talked like as fancy as Walpole.

Joe: I think the important thing is not which language he said, but what he said. Which was essentially, please allow Robert Knight to escape. A thing that a king should never say is "please allow Robert Knight to escape." Now, one of the—

Abram: There aren't that many Robert Knights to get locked up in Belgium, so that's why it's rare to say.

Joe: Okay, that is also a good point. But one of the historians that I was reading about this said that this was the George I equivalent to "please destroy this letter." That's what Blaine from Maine said. That's what Blaine from Maine said. For which president was that?

Abram: I don't know. It's one in the, like, early to mid-twenties.

Joe: So honestly, that almost sounds impossible. Would King George really have said it? Could that message have been a fake?

Abram: But it said that he said it. Which, now that I think about it, sounds a bit weird.

Joe: It does sound a little bit weird. But the bottom line is he's like, "Please help this guy to escape." I believe he did escape. Ultimately, he went to Paris. I think he hung out with Bolingbroke for a while.

Abram: Yeah, I assume he hung out with Bolingbroke because Bolingbroke— so Paris, remember, that was one of Walpole's two main enemies, so it was Oxford and Bolingbroke, right?

Joe: So the end result of 1721 was that Walpole saved who he wanted to save, manipulated who was found guilty and who was innocent. He claimed the reins of power. And he upset a lot of both Whigs and Tories, people that wanted to see the truth coming out.

Abram: Yeah, that's what you don't want to hear.

Joe: No, no, he didn't want the truth necessarily to come out. He wanted his truth to come out, which was not the truth.

Abram: I assume it wasn't the truth. Probably most people knew too.

Atterbury Plot

Joe: So while all this was happening, our friends the Jacobites, they weren't sitting still. So maybe they're not our friends.

Abram: Probably not our friends.

Joe: Now, I don't think I'd be a Jacobite, but bottom line is they weren't standing still. So let's introduce someone new. This is Francis Atterbury. He was Dean of Christ Church in Oxford, Dean of Westminster, and Bishop of Rochester. As the Dean of Westminster, he even planned Queen Anne's funeral. In other words, he's a pretty powerful church leader. He got to sit in the House of Lords, and he was given all of those jobs by somebody who you know as Robert Harley, the Earl of Oxford. So he was definitely one of Harley's people, and he was definitely a Jacobite.

Joe: So at Queen Anne's funeral, it's said, and I, again, I can't confirm this, but at Queen Anne's funeral, he apparently had to be stopped from pronouncing James as James III, King of England, instead of, of course, who would actually become King George I. Good thing he did, 'cause otherwise he would've been arrested and probably killed for treason. And as it was, he could continue to do other stuff, including what we're about to talk about.

Joe: So you might remember when Sunderland was being investigated for that bribe that Walpole was looking into during the South Sea Company stuff. One of the people that he turned to was to the Tories to try to get some support, to try to help him not get tossed in the Tower of London. And that's when he started talking to this guy named Atterbury.

Joe: And we don't know how much Sunderland and Atterbury actually got along. We don't know how much they ended up doing together, but Atterbury and others were plotting to try to bring the Jacobites back to power. There was going to be an election in 1722.

Joe: Now, remember, at this point, an election had to be held every seven years, and the Whigs were doing their best to hold off the elections as long as possible to try to keep everybody in their seats. So Atterbury and some conspirators, they were trying to put James III on the throne by an Irish army, and this Irish army was going to somehow march on London in May of 1722. Apparently Oxford was considered as like possibly a person to lead the army, but he was really old at this point, so he didn't do it. Really, I don't know that this plan—

Abram: Yeah, was he like fifties at that point?

Joe: He was 59. But the point is, there was this plot going in the background. Sunderland died, and honestly, the plot didn't go anywhere. They were all caught pretty quickly. Walpole actually had Sunderland's rooms searched after he died to find evidence if he was involved in this Atterbury plot.

Joe: Maybe he found evidence, maybe he didn't. We do know that Atterbury had a secret code name. He was called, quote, "Mr. Illington." I don't know why he was called Mr. Illington, but apparently all the people in this plot would send messages to each other in code, and they wouldn't call themselves their real name. I wouldn't call you Abram, I'd call you Jazz Master Robert or something, I don't know. But he wasn't going to be called Sunderland, he was going to be called Mr. Illington.

Joe: They figured out a whole bunch of people that were involved in this plot. They arrested Atterbury, they put him in the Tower of London, but Walpole didn't really have enough evidence to actually convict him. He was put on trial in the House of Lords in April–May of 1723, and he was basically exiled. He also went to live in Paris and apparently hung out with Bolingbroke.

Joe: So don't worry, he's not going to be there too much longer, which is bad news for Walpole.

Abram: Finally, his luck would run out.

Sir Robert Walpole and Family

Joe: Well, Robert's luck is going to run out at some point here, but this isn't the time when his luck runs out. Like, this is 1724. This is like Robert Walpole's peak time when he was in charge of everything. Sunderland was gone, Stanhope was gone. He was First Lord of the Treasury. His brother-in-law Townshend was Secretary of State.

Joe: His brother, Horatio Walpole, had also been elected to Parliament and was working as an ambassador. He would be both working in the Treasury and ambassador to France every now and then. He had a different brother called Galfridus Walpole that was elected as an MP before he became the Postmaster General.

Joe: So the Postmaster General is the guy who has access to all the mail. And it is generally thought that Robert Walpole had a spy network through the postal system, through his brother, that would allow him to read people's mail.

Abram: I'm guessing that's corrupt.

Joe: It's not good.

Abram: It's not good. Walpole.

Joe: This is very suspicious. I mean, he was very effective. He is just not what we would consider on the up and up today. Yeah, so we'll keep going. He has more family. His daughter Mary Walpole married a guy by the name of George Cholmondeley. He would also become an MP in 1722. Robert Walpole had been offered a peerage, but he turned it down so he could remain in the House of Commons. Instead, his eldest son, who's also named Robert, became Baron Walpole, and now his eldest son is in the House of Lords.

Abram: This is still very lucky for Walpole. I wonder when his luck will run out. Oh, if it ever will run out, maybe.

Joe: So through Walpole's sister Dorothy Walpole, he was of course the brother-in-law of Charles Townshend. And Charles Townshend had some interesting brothers-in-law through his original wife Elizabeth Pelham, who you probably know.

Abram: Of course, that is Pelham-Holles and Henry Pelham and Thomas Pelham-Holles. Put two pins in them. Well, one on each of them, we're not doing two pins on Pelham. So put a pin on each of them.

Joe: So put a pin on them. In addition, three of Townshend's sons, Charles Townshend, Thomas Townshend, and William Townshend, were all also elected as MPs in 1722. The point here, like, I could just keep going on. The point is that the Walpole-Townshend family was incredibly powerful. Had many, many family members all over the government. And nowadays we call that nepotism, and it's very bad, but this is kind of how the government worked back then.

Abram: The whole Walpole-Townshend family.

Joe: Okay, so he's still doing great. In 1725, Walpole was feeling like, "Hey, you know, I didn't become a baron, so, uh, would you mind just knighting me?" And so he asked the king if he could be Sir Robert Walpole. What did the king say?

Abram: Yes?

Joe: Yes! You are now Sir Robert Walpole. The king brought back something called the Order of the Bath, which apparently is knights needing baths in order to be knighted. I don't know, it sounds all very weird. But the following year, he was promoted from the Order of the Bath to the Order of the Garter. And I don't know why they named their knights after this, but the garter is like— I think it's a type of underwear. But, you know, he considered it— I mean, this was like the pride of his life.

Joe: So even though everything was working out for him politically, Walpole's family life was very strained. So his relationship with Catherine, originally it was a matter of money. And while they had children together, they weren't the happiest of every couple.

Abram: Is that Catherine who may or may not be shorter than him?

Joe: Yes, that was Catherine Shorter.

Abram: Who probably was shorter than him?

Joe: Who quite likely was shorter than him, just because women on average at the time were shorter than men. But still, we don't know. I didn't check her height.

Joe: But something happens that was sad. And, well, their daughter, Catherine Walpole, died of tuberculosis in 1722. And this is when Robert may have turned a little bit away from his wife and found another woman that he was seeing on the side. And all of this stuff that, you know, you can't really talk about with a ten-year-old, but he basically was having an affair with this woman called Maria or Molly Skerrett.

Joe: So because he was in Parliament, he was frequently away from Norfolk, so, you know, he could have his wife at home and his wife on the road and I guess it worked out for him, but this is another area where Walpole is personally a little icky. I think a lot of powerful people were kind of icky, but it's not just the corruption that was the thing. It's also he's cheating on his wife.

Joe: So that said, he never really loved his wife, perhaps, and maybe this is the first time he's found love. But so maybe we should feel happy for him.

Abram: But good job, Walpole, but also too bad for his wife.

Joe: Yeah, it is a little sad, but unfortunately we're going to start the beginning of the end, because in March 1726, something bad happened.

Abram: What?

Joe: Dorothy Walpole died. And Dorothy— Dorothy Walpole was the wife of Townshend, and that meant that the family link between Walpole and Townshend was severed. They were still good friends, they still worked together, but they were no longer quite as much family. And so suddenly they're going to be rubbing up against each other a little bit more than they would have because now they don't have family to block them.

Joe: Yeah, now it's like they're a little bit less family than they used to be.

Walpole, Massachusetts

Joe: Now I'm going to pause here for a second.

Abram: I just—

Joe: To talk about where we are now because 1724, when he was at the height of his power, and this is when he was getting the honors like knighthood— critical event for where we are now— Walpole, Massachusetts was founded, which is where we are right now.

Abram: Indeed.

Joe: So just to give you some background, Walpole today is part of Norfolk County, which is very funny because of course Robert Walpole is from Norfolk.

Abram: But I wonder if that's why they named it.

Joe: I wonder that too. But in 1724, Norfolk County hadn't been created yet. This was still considered part of Suffolk County.

Joe: So this spot where we're sitting was originally owned by the Neponset tribe, and the Neponset tribe sold their land— however real that sale was, I have no idea— they sold their land to the town of Dedham in 1636. In 1659, some people from the town of Dedham put up the first sawmill in what is now called the Walpole Town Forest. It was on the local river. I think it's the Neponset River.

Abram: Is that that forest right over there?

Joe: It might indeed be the forest right over there. I didn't check on the map, but that would be pretty neat if it was. They built a sawmill. Before too long, some people wanted to live by the sawmill, and by 1663, we have the beginning of a town that is growing up around this sawmill. In Dedham.

Joe: Now, in 1704, the people that were living near the sawmill, they petitioned the town of Dedham for their independence. Do you know what Dedham said?

Abram: No.

Joe: No, of course they said no. They wanted those people. They asked again in 1721. What did Dedham say?

Abram: No.

Joe: No. But somehow in 1724, they asked and they said yes. Or maybe they just like, "Can we now? Can we now? Can we now? Can we now?"

Abram: Yeah.

Joe: "Fine." So the town was granted in 1724. It was named Walpole after the prime minister. The first census two years later said that there were 45 people living here.

Abram: I thought you said it was a town. That's too small to be a town.

Joe: This is colonial America. 1726. 45 people was enough because 45 people, a church, a store, a sawmill. I mean, you've got a town.

Joe: A couple more points of the history of this town. In 1775, 157 people from a much larger town of Walpole, under a person named Captain Seth Bullard, they actually marched all the way up to Lexington and Concord, and they fought the British as part of that famous battle.

Abram: So now they have a lot more people than just 45?

Joe: Now, yeah.

Abram: Do they have like, do they have like 700?

Joe: And keep in mind that this is 50 years later, so I don't know the population, but I think a couple hundred is definitely right. So 157 men went and fought in the Battle of Lexington and Concord. And then after that, they went to another place that you and I like to go, which is that they went to Newport, Rhode Island, and they attempted to keep the British from controlling or taking over Newport.

Joe: So in the 1800s, Walpole's role as a sawmill town gave way to other industries. The river continued to be a major source of local power for factories. And we are actually recording from the library. While this building here that we're in was opened in 2012, it is descended from the first Walpole Public Library, which was not located here, it was a little bit down the street, which opened in 1872. And the people that run the library here actually trace their library to the 1872 Walpole Public Library. Isn't that kind of cool?

Abram: Uh-huh.

Joe: I think it's cool.

Troubles Brewing

Joe: So trouble is brewing. With the Tories, they're disorganized, they're no longer a strong opposition. Walpole had had a ton of success, but in 1725, there's a new group forming on the Whig side, and they were called the Patriot Whigs, led by somebody who you might have heard about, but we haven't mentioned before, I don't think. William Pulteney.

Abram: Put a pin on him, or put a half pin on him.

Joe: Put a half pin on him, yeah. So he's not gonna become a prime minister, but—

Abram: He's gonna be one of the two disputed prime ministers, so we will end up doing an episode on him. That's why it's a half pin.

Joe: Yes. So he'll be prime minister maybe for what, three days?

Abram: Three or four days or something like that.

Joe: So we'll have a special episode about him. He's really cool. He's an anti-corruption fighter. Like the opposite of Walpole. He's just a really cool figure, and I'm looking forward to getting into more.

Joe: So by this time, Bolingbroke suddenly came back too. So King George pardoned Bolingbroke in 1723, and shortly thereafter he returned from Paris to London. Now, exactly why King George pardoned him— Walpole didn't want to pardon him— like, I don't know. One of the things I read said that Bolingbroke communicated with somebody that King George was cheating on his wife with, and that they arranged together. And like, I tried to follow it, but somehow this guy who was a terrible Tory and a Jacobite has just convinced the king to let him back in the country. So I don't know.

Joe: Walpole at least managed to prevent him from being in Parliament. So instead, Bolingbroke created a newspaper called The Craftsman. That became a leading newspaper for all the people that hated Walpole and his government. So basically, it's gonna remain a complete thorn in his side for the rest of his time.

Joe: In foreign policy, Walpole's power was also slipping. Townshend, as Secretary of State, was pushing for a treaty with France and Prussia against Austria and Spain. They had signed a Treaty of Vienna in 1725 that brought them closer, and Britain's strategy was to maintain balance.

Joe: Now, Walpole just wanted to keep Britain out of the mess, but his brother Horatio, who remember was ambassador to France, plus Townshend, they pushed to get their own treaty, which was called the Treaty of Hanover. And this basically aligned Britain with France and Prussia. But Walpole didn't want anything to do with this. Like, France is our enemy. What are you doing? I don't really get it. But Walpole was just really unhappy with Townshend pushing Britain potentially towards another war.

Gulliver's Travels & The Beggar's Opera

Joe: The other thing that was going on with Walpole was that people were making fun of him a lot. So Walpole was already becoming a little bit unpopular, and for some reason, Walpole, he was happy bribing politicians, but one people that he never really wanted to bribe was, like, the artists, the writers, the playwrights. And later in life, he'll be quoted as saying that he never reads except the newspapers. He didn't have much patience for artists.

Joe: So just two examples of what was going on. There was a book published that you probably know a little bit about in 1726 by Swift called Gulliver's Travels. Gulliver's Travels is basically four sections, but in the first of those sections, Gulliver, who's an Englishman, has traveled to Lilliput where people are like six inches tall.

Joe: There is a person in Lilliput called Flimnap. I don't know why he's called Flimnap, but Flimnap is the Lord High Treasurer of Lilliput. And you know what Flimnap has to do?

Abram: What?

Joe: He gets in front of his king and he does a little dance, and he does his little dance a little bit higher and a little bit bigger, and like the king just makes him do his dance. And I could quote it for you, but like the idea is that Swift is imagining Walpole as this tiny little man dancing for the interests of this king.

Joe: Another guy, John Gay, created something called The Beggar's Opera, first performed in 1728. And this opera, which was even attended by Walpole himself, was a tremendous hit in London.

Joe: And that opera has a character called Peachum, and Peachum was Walpole, except instead of being in charge of Parliament, Peachum was in charge of a band of thieves. And he would scheme against the thieves, and he would steal from the thieves. Like, really what Gay was doing was, you know, just presenting Walpole as being nothing but a thief among thieves, and he even backstabs other thieves. Isn't that funny?

Abram: It's a bit weird.

Joe: It's a bit weird.

Abram: Thieves fighting thieves, which they probably do.

Joe: Yeah, I'm sure they do. So John Gay was said to have become very rich as a result of this play, but Walpole really, really, really didn't like him or it. And while John tried to write a sequel, Walpole basically told him, "If you write a sequel, you will never get it published. I will make sure of it."

Abram: He didn't say it in those exact words, but he probably said it so much more fancy. He probably said it a lot more fancy because we all know he likes to talk fancy.

Joe: He does like to talk fancy.

A New King

Joe: Now, what happened, Abram, in June 1727? Eh. Who went "eh"?

Abram: George, specifically one.

Joe: George I died, and who was now king?

Abram: George.

Joe: George II.

Abram: Yes, I told you. I warned you, there are gonna be a lot of Georges.

Joe: There are gonna be a lot of Georges. So you might remember that initially the younger George and Walpole, they had a great relationship when Walpole was out of power. But Walpole kind of abandoned George when he got the opportunity to come back to power, and George really didn't forgive him.

Joe: So Walpole, having just been told of the death of George I, he gets into his carriage and he drives up to whichever palace the new King George II is in, and he goes up and he's all solemn and sad, and he tells the king, "You know, I'm sorry, but, you know, your father has died." And the new king, King George II, looked at him and said, and I quote, "Go to Chiswick and take your directions from Sir Spencer Compton."

Abram: That's rude.

Joe: That's rude. But what was— do you know what he was really saying?

Abram: What?

Joe: Well, I think he was saying that he wanted Spencer Compton to be prime minister, which will eventually happen.

Abram: Sorry about the sneak peek.

Joe: It will eventually happen, but not for a while. But George wasn't fond of Robert Walpole. So at this point, Compton was Speaker of the House, and he was also the Treasurer to the Prince of Wales. So he was a guy who was very close to George II, because of course, up until a couple of days before, George II was Prince of Wales, as the next in line for the throne often is.

Joe: You know, you're right, Compton's going to lose this battle, and the reason he lost is because Robert Walpole was still good friends with Queen Caroline, who they had met all those years before. She and Walpole got along very well, and she helped to convince George II that maybe this Walpole guy should stick around.

Joe: Supposedly, and I think this might be a lie, but it's kind of a good lie, supposedly Queen Caroline brought Spencer Compton and Robert Walpole together in front of her and the new King George II, and she made them have like a speech contest. And whichever gave the better speech would become the next prime minister. I don't think this really happened, but it's a great story. And guess who gave the better speech?

Abram: Who?

Joe: Which one became prime minister?

Abram: Walpole.

Joe: Walpole.

Abram: Well, technically he's already prime minister, so that question's answer would be Compton because he's the one who will become prime minister. Walpole is already Prime Minister. So yeah, you were technically wrong. Too bad.

Joe: So how does Walpole usually accomplish things? By being corrupt and by money. Corruption equals money, right? So do you want to know how he really did it?

Abram: By paying a lot of money.

Joe: So there is something that Parliament controls called the civil list, which says how much money a king is allowed to spend, and he basically offered twice as much money as Compton did, and so King George said, "Great, you can be my next prime minister."

Joe: So in the end, Walpole won out. There had to be a new election. Now, this isn't true today. So when King Charles was made king, they didn't have to reelect Parliament, but at this time, every time the king or queen died, they would all have to have a new election immediately.

Joe: So Walpole started to focus on a new 1727 election. But this election was going to get harder than the previous ones because now he had Bolingbroke around, Pulteney, he had less of a relationship with Townshend. You know, it was a hard-won thing, but he did manage to come out ahead.

Abram: Yeah, he has a lot of rivals now.

Goodbye Townshend

Joe: He has a lot of rivals, and throughout the 1720s, like, tensions were rising with Spain. In 1727, for example, Spain had just attempted to recapture Gibraltar.

Joe: So the point is that Walpole and Townshend started to have differences of opinions over foreign policy. We've already seen that before, and this finally came kind of to the end where Townshend really believes in that Treaty of Hanover, and he saw Austria as a big enemy. But Walpole and others, including Newcastle and others— Thomas Pelham-Holles.

Abram: Yeah, Newcastle was Thomas Pelham-Holles. Who did not have holes in him. I assume that would be very painful.

Joe: That would be very painful, but I think the Holles he has actually gave him a lot of money, so that's fine.

Joe: So the point is Townshend basically just said, "Guys, you know what, I quit. You win, you get to be in charge. I don't want to argue with you anymore." And Townshend actually went off to do something pretty amazing in his own way. He developed a new nickname. You'll never guess what it was.

Abram: What?

Joe: Turnip Townshend.

Abram: Uh, that's even worse.

Joe: Turnip Townshend, because he's gonna go and he's gonna completely revolutionize the way agriculture works in Britain, and he's gonna have people planting turnips and other stuff in order to make their crops all healthier, and it's gonna be great for Britain. But people are just gonna make fun of him and call him Turnip Townshend from then on. But really, it was an awesome thing.

Joe: Townshend's job was taken over by William Stanhope.

Abram: Not the big Stanhope.

Joe: Not the previous Stanhope, but the other Stanhope. There are too many Stanhopes, so just to remind you, James Stanhope, the Earl Stanhope, was the parliamentary leader until 1721.

Abram: And he went, "Eh!" while giving a speech, I assume.

Joe: Correct. That co-led the Stanhope-Sunderland government. He was a cousin to Charles Stanhope, the MP that was involved in the South Sea Company. And William Stanhope, that's now the new Secretary of State. There's even more Stanhopes that didn't become prominent in our story, but we'll just stick with those for now.

Joe: The real power would be, of course, the Duke of Newcastle. Thomas Pelham-Holles is now pretty much running the foreign policy for the government, and he's going to be doing that.

Abram: We'll talk a bit more about that in his episode, which will be episode five, I'm pretty sure.

Joe: Episode five, I can't wait.

Quick Notes on Religion

Joe: Now, just a couple of quick things. So first, Robert Walpole was generally lenient on religion. He preferred just making money, and he didn't want to cause a lot of strife. So he somewhat strengthened protections for some Protestants, especially Quakers. He worked to replace Tory church leaders with Whig church leaders, pretty much as you would expect.

War of Polish Succession

Joe: Another thing that was going on right now was something called the War of Polish Succession. So you might remember last time we had the War of Spanish Succession. This is the War of Polish Succession. There's also going to be a War of Austrian Succession. Like, there's just too many of these things. And King George II really wanted to get involved because of his Hanover stuff, and Walpole prevented him from getting involved. So we won't talk too much more about that.

Abram: Walpole.

Taxes, Taxes, Taxes

Joe: But now we're getting to the part where he's getting to be less and less popular, and a big reason why he's less and less popular has to do with— what did I just spend way too much doing in early April? Not researching podcasts, but—

Abram: Taxes.

Joe: Taxes. In politics, then as today, taxes are like one of the most important parts of the job, right? You need money to run a country, but nobody likes to pay money to run the country.

Joe: So in the 1730s, Walpole's going to get deep into taxes. Now his job, he sees it as being, "I want to simplify the tax code. I want to make it easier for the government to collect the money. I want to make it harder for smugglers to bring in stuff without paying." And so he's going to start to put some new taxes on and changing additional taxes, but it's going to change stuff.

Joe: One of the things that he does is he reimposes something called a salt tax. So anytime somebody wants to eat any food, especially back then, you needed salt. Right, they didn't have refrigerators, so you would use salt to keep things fresh for longer, although I guess it would make it very salty. I don't know, I've never actually done salted food, but that's how they claim it works. So farmers and things would need to buy a lot of salt. So he was looking to increase the taxes on, like, the farmers and the people that need to eat.

Joe: And at the same time, he was trying to reduce the land tax. So if you were a rich person and you had a lot of property, he was saying, like, "I think I want you to pay less taxes."

Joe: So overall, his policies through this and through some other things were shifting the tax burden from the rich aristocrats onto the merchants and the common people. So he basically said, and I quote, "When every man pays a small share, a great sum may be raised for public services without any man being sensible of what he pays." So in other words, he's like, well, everyone will just pay a little and no one will notice. It'll be fine. And that was— that sounds pretty good. But Abram, do you see what is wrong about that?

Abram: What?

Joe: So how this would work is essentially you'd have the rich people who spend very little on food and other things he was trying to tax, like gin and cigarettes and wine and other stuff he was trying to tax. The rich people pay relatively little on that, and the poor people, because they need to eat, a lot more of their income goes to things like salt and such. So in effect, he was lowering the taxes on the rich and raising the taxes on the poor, and he was running around like, "Oh, I'm simplifying the tax code."

Abram: Yeah, that isn't very good.

Joe: Well, you know, the same stuff happens today. It's like, we should have a flat tax. Well, a flat tax actually is disproportionately, you know, penalizing the poor over the rich. But it's just interesting that this was even happening way back then.

Joe: This even affected the Americas because Rhode Island was asking for help with a sugar tax, and Walpole was just having absolutely none of it.

Joe: Now, at the end, Walpole tried to get something called the Excise Act passed in 1733, and at this point, everyone hated him, everyone hated the taxes. There were riots happening in London.

Abram: Very bad, Walpole.

Joe: Pulteney, Bolingbroke, and others just really made it impossible to get that law passed. He passed some other taxes. He passed a tax on gin in 1736. But the point is that Walpole decided to stake a lot of his career at this time on making the rich people happier at the expense of the less rich people. And I think this is ultimately going to be one of the things that causes his downfall.

Joe: New thing, 1735, we're not going to talk about it too much tonight. 10 Downing Street. Do you know what 10 Downing Street is?

Abram: Where the Prime Minister is? I'm guessing that something will happen.

Joe: So 10 Downing Street is officially given to Walpole. Now Walpole turns it down. He says, "I will not take this personally, but this will be the house of the First Lord of the Treasury from now on." And so as the Prime Minister's role has evolved from the First Lord of the Treasury, the Prime Minister's house has been 10 Downing Street ever since 1735.

Joe: Now it's changed and they've done some additions and many other things. We can maybe do a special episode on that if you're interested, but just be aware that this is the point where they get the White House of Prime Ministers, right?

Joe: So finally, I don't even know that he lives there, to be honest. I think it's too small for him. He's like, "I'm very rich, I'm gonna live in big house."

Abram: Probably it's a lot more fancy than that.

Joe: But who knows whether he lived there or not. He was given this house in 1735.

Against Art

Joe: You might remember there were all those artists that were making fun of him a little while ago.

Abram: Yeah, like the late 1720s.

Joe: So do you know what he did?

Abram: What?

Joe: He said, "You're not allowed to make fun of me anymore." He passed a law in 1737 that shut down theaters, that made it so that anyone that wanted to put on a play had to have the play approved by the government first. So that nobody could make plays that were making fun of the government.

Abram: That's not good, Walpole.

Joe: That's not good, Walpole. Now, they also used something called the Libel Act in order to enforce this even more, but the point was that Walpole really wasn't taking a joke very well. He was losing. People didn't like his taxes. He was becoming less popular, and instead of making himself more popular, he said, "I'm gonna ban plays from making fun of me." I don't think it's gonna work.

Abram: I don't think it's gonna work either. Probably just make it even worse.

Joe: I think it does make it worse.

Against Frederick

Joe: So do you know who Frederick is?

Abram: Is that George II's kid?

Joe: Frederick, the Prince of Wales, is George II's kid. And he was initially forced to live in Hanover. So he wasn't even allowed to come to Britain until he was 23. So he's basically been living mostly by himself, of course, with lots of servants and castles and stuff. And his father would visit every now and then, but he has been living in Hanover. And finally, he came to England in 1728.

Joe: You know the thing that none of the Hanoverian kings like their kids, right? Well, he stopped getting along with his parents pretty much, and his dad and his mom were pretty good friends with Robert Walpole. So what's Frederick gonna do? Frederick is gonna find some of his own friends. And who do you think would be a great friend to Frederick?

Abram: Bolingbroke? Pulteney?

Joe: Pulteney. Very good.

Abram: Second guess.

Joe: I mean, maybe Bolingbroke too, but the point is that he and Pulteney are gonna become good friends. Frederick is gonna be supporting the opposition.

Joe: George II keeps almost getting himself killed, like he was almost killed in like a ship accident. In 1736, I think. So Walpole's now, "Oh God, if George II dies and we have King Frederick I, I'm gonna be out of a job."

Joe: Now, what would Walpole normally do? He was like, "Oh, just pay him more money."

Abram: Yep.

Joe: But guess what happened?

Abram: What?

Joe: King George refused to let Walpole pay him more money.

Abram: He refused his way of making people like him.

Joe: Well, yeah.

Abram: Which is very bad for Walpole. The beginning, he had so much good luck, but now towards the end, it's all running out, and he now has so much bad luck.

Joe: Now it's so much bad luck. So King George actually was making his son get paid only half as much as he got paid when he was the Prince of Wales. And so to be clear, they don't get— this money isn't for them, it's for all of their castles and their staff and for going to special royal things, right? It's, you know, it's not like they're getting paid personally, but he still says you have half as much money to make your castle look good. And he was not very happy about that.

Beginning of the End

Joe: And now more bad things were beginning to happen. So Walpole's wife Catherine died in August of 1737. He wasn't all that sad, maybe because he didn't really get along with her.

Abram: And now there's no one shorter than him.

Joe: Now he has no one shorter than him. And then he started to spend more time with Molly Skerrett. And in fact, he would marry Molly in February of 1738. But something really sad happened then.

Abram: What?

Joe: Only three months after potentially having the love of his life, this person that he seemed to really have affection for, she died three months later.

Abram: Uh-oh.

Joe: He's not having a good time. She actually died during pregnancy. They were going to have another kid together. This really crushed him.

Joe: In November 1737, Queen Caroline died. So that's King George II's wife.

Abram: So much sadness for him.

Joe: A lot of sad, because of course she was the one that kept him and George II together, right? She was like the third part of their triangle that made that together. She was the one that made George II like him and to not have Spencer Compton as his prime minister. So this was tough.

Joe: And then something else happened.

Abram: What?

Joe: The end of Robert Walpole's career as prime minister is due to something a little bit unexpected.

Abram: What?

Joe: An ear.

Abram: Oh, what? What? What happened?

Joe: Ear? In April 1731, Spanish forces boarded a British merchant ship called the Rebecca off the coast of Cuba. This ship was carrying a shipment of sugar, which the Spanish government said that they weren't allowed to have. Now, trade with Spain had been blocked since 1729, but the British didn't really care a lot of the time.

Joe: While interrogating the captain— the captain's name, by the way, was Robert Jenkins. Tell me if this is starting to ring a bell— the Spanish cut off part of his ear, his left ear.

Joe: So Britain continued to fight. Britain founded the colony of Georgia in 1732 in order to give British merchants in the area a safe harbor from the Spanish. Remember that Florida was still part of Spain at this point.

Joe: And in 1738, so six years after that captain got his ear cut off, Robert Jenkins was asked to testify before Parliament about all of the abuses that the Spanish had done to him, including he brought his cut-off ear to Parliament. It's like, "Hey guys, here is my piece of ear. The Spanish cut this off."

Abram: Why is this so funny?

Joe: As usual, this was really about money. So the Whigs that were in opposition to Walpole— this included Pulteney, but also a few new names— William Pitt, George Grenville.

Abram: William Pitt and George Grenville. Should we put some pins in them?

Joe: Yeah, let's put some pins in them. These guys really wanted to punish the Spanish. They really wanted to open back up trade. They wanted to make some more money. Even George II was interested in some more money.

Joe: So in October of 1739, Walpole, who normally did not like war, who didn't want anything to do with war, who thought that peace was the best way to make money, he agreed to allow Britain to wage war against Spain. And the name of that war is called the War of Jenkins' Ear. Have you ever heard of the War of Jenkins' Ear?

Abram: No, but it sounds gross.

Joe: I think it's one of the more grosser names for a war. So remember, Walpole did not want this war. Walpole, like, "I'm agreeing to this, but you're forcing me to it. I don't want anything to do with this."

Joe: The British started to fight. We'll probably talk about the war more in another episode. In 1739, the British captured Portobelo, which is modern-day Panama. In 1740, the British attempted to capture St. Augustine, Florida, but failed. Did you know St. Augustine has been around since then?

Abram: It wasn't founded that year, so you're incorrect, but I knew it was founded before then.

Joe: Yes, they fought something called the Battle of Cartagena de Indias. In Colombia, but that battle failed. The Battle of St. Augustine also failed. In fact, more people died of disease in that battle of yellow fever than actually got killed by the Spanish. It was a complete disaster.

Joe: So these losses, despite Walpole never wanting the war, weighed heavily on the administration. Pulteney, who wanted the war, now complained about how badly Walpole was running it. So did William Pitt. William Pitt practically wanted him tossed in the Tower of London for how bad he felt that Walpole was running the war.

Joe: And so the end of Walpole's career actually happens in a very unexpected way. He's really unpopular. The opposition is becoming more and more powerful. He's just had another pretty unsuccessful election. And there was a by-election in Chippenham, and the by-election was essentially Walpole's people versus Pulteney.

Abram: Bolingbroke.

Joe: Yeah, Pulteney picked more than Bolingbroke, because Bolingbroke is still like, he's still a Tory. These are like Whig versus Whig.

Abram: Yeah.

Joe: And the battle essentially became over whether Walpole's people would get the seats from Chippenham, or whether the other faction would get the seats. And Walpole literally put his entire career on the line. They saw it as something of a confidence vote, like in Walpole's government. Walpole lost.

Joe: So that was February 2nd. A couple days later, I think it was on February 6th, Walpole went to King George, told him he was resigning. Supposedly King George cried. I don't know if I believe that King George cried.

Abram: Yeah, I'd probably just like, "Yay, now I can put Spencer Compton in charge." Walpole might have been like, "I can hear you." He's— might be something like that.

Joe: Might be something.

Abram: It was all probably more fancy because of how fancy Walpole talks.

Joe: Yeah, it was probably fancy because Walpole talks super fancy. So the point is that he goes, he tells King George II that he's resigned. King George actually gives him a little parting gift. He makes him into the Earl of Orford.

Joe: By the way, there is an Orford, Massachusetts, but it's like two and a half hours' drive from here. And I was not going to go and have it in the Orford Library.

Joe: And on February 11th, Walpole officially resigned. William Pitt and others had said that they needed a younger man as Prime Minister in order to help lead the war effort.

Abram: But guess what? They chose Compton, who was even older.

Joe: But guess what? They chose Compton, who was even older, and we'll get to his story next time.

Abram: Ranking time soon.

After the End

Joe: Almost, almost. You're jumping ahead just a little bit. He's not dead yet, Abram. He's pretty close to being dead though.

Joe: So just to fast forward through the rest of his life, William Pitt and others attempted to have some inquiries. Remember when Walpole was put in charge, he kind of had trials for all the people that he didn't like from the previous administration, but this time it didn't succeed. So he was not punished, he was not thrown in the Tower of London.

Joe: Because he was still friends with George II, he remained an advisor, and then now he could serve in the House of Lords. And in fact, he would be at least occasionally an active member of the House of Lords for the next couple of years until he died on March 18th, 1745, at 68 years old. We'll talk maybe a little bit more about his involvement as we get into the other prime ministers, but that is it for now.

Abram: Rating! Okay, how much he accomplished, 1 to 20. He was the first Prime Minister, so it has to be a lot. So yeah, he was the first ever Prime Minister, and he managed to, I think, get a lot of people punished. He was also very bossy, but that's, I think, most of the stuff we can say without getting into the unaccomplished stuff, right?

Joe: So he established the post of prime minister. Let's not give him— now, he wouldn't have said that, right? He hated being called prime minister. They were already calling him prime minister even then, but he hated it. He did not want to be called prime minister, but he established the job of prime minister.

Joe: He did successfully save the country from going economically under during the South Sea Company crisis. He largely kept Britain out of war up until the end, where he got himself into a disastrous war, Jenkins' Ear.

Abram: But that will go more in the next score.

Joe: Yeah. So how much he accomplished?

Abram: I think he accomplished like 17 out of 20.

Joe: 17 out of 20?

Abram: Yeah. There was definitely more he could have done, but the stuff that he did makes up for a lot of it.

Joe: I am going to go slightly lower because we have no idea what we're doing. We've never done this before. I'm going to say that he accomplished 15 out of 20.

Abram: Okay. Which means that's 32.

Joe: 32 points so far.

Abram: Okay, I'm gonna do 32 points. How much he de-accomplished— this is minus points, so out of 10. I think that he managed to get Britain into a terrible war that led him to be terrible, but before that, there really wasn't much that he did that wrong, right? But that was also kind of big.

Joe: Well, where does his corruption— does his corruption points go against de-accomplishments or personality?

Abram: I think probably personality, but that's really the only thing bad that happened because he like undid something. But since he's the first one, he couldn't really undo a lot. You could say he undid king's ruling, but that's sort of, you know.

Joe: Yeah, no, I don't think he has too many de-accomplishments. I don't know how to rate this exactly.

Abram: So I think I'm giving him like 5 because he got them into a terrible war. But I'm going 4, actually.

Joe: 4 points because of the War of Jenkins' Ear. Okay.

Abram: No, 3 points because of that. And I'm not sure if I should count this, but he did get rid of king's ruling. So 1 for that.

Joe: I don't know. Is that really a de-accomplishment? I mean, I think that that's—

Abram: Technically, yes. No, because he undid that.

Joe: Okay, well, you can take away points for that. I'm not going to. I am actually going to give him 4 now because the War of Jenkins' Ear, and I really don't like the law that he passed about censoring the theaters.

Abram: Oh yeah, that's definitely bad. So I'm also doing that. Yeah, we have a 1.

Joe: Okay, so are we minus 4 each?

Abram: Yep. Which means minus 8 out of 20. How bad was his personality? That one you can't really say a lot.

Joe: Well, I think he cheated on his wife. He was very corrupt.

Abram: Yes. You can't say a lot, but all of them are pretty big.

Joe: He had a quote, and I didn't use the quote. I should have, where he said that every man has his price. And that's a super famous quote. But he's basically saying, "I can find a way to bribe anyone."

Abram: Okay, so this one I have to give him like 8, 7 actually, because it wasn't like very, very big. Actually, 8. 8.

Joe: I'm giving him minus 8. Because I don't like how corrupt he was. I don't like that he added corruption at every level of government, and I don't like that he cheated on his wife.

Abram: So that means the total— well, minus to the total of that, adding corruption, 24. And so 24 out of 40 in the minus points.

Abram: How interesting. Well, at first it might seem like he's just average or a bit above because of what he did. But then you get into the sadness parts, which, like shown by Franklin Pierce, can be very entertaining. Remember, like, two years, three deaths happen, and those are like one of the three most important people.

Joe: So yeah, I personally had trouble finding like little personal details that made him interesting. I mean, there's a lot that he did.

Abram: Yeah, he definitely would have a lot of stuff in that, but towards the end it would really all fall apart. I'd ask, so that's out of 20, so that means I'd have to give him 7 for if we did a movie about him.

Joe: Okay, for how interesting, and as you say, how interesting a movie would be about him. And I'm gonna disagree with you.

Abram: What?

Joe: I think of all the prime ministers, there is a lot here. There's a South Sea crisis, there was a time he spent in the Tower of London.

Abram: So yeah, this would definitely—

Joe: I'm actually going— and he's the first prime minister. I'm giving him a 10.

Abram: I'm giving him 9 because the lack of personal details.

Joe: Yeah, that could just be, you know, my own failings as a researcher, though.

Abram: Yeah, but—

Joe: Understood.

Abram: So that means 19.0. Okay. How much does his picture look like? Actually, look at this. So this picture. So we'll rate it out of 10, both of us, and then we'll divide it in half.

Abram: Okay, so I'll look it up first. He looks very fancy. He looks like a king, except a bit fatter. I have to say that he looks like he's holding this weird bag with like the crown on it. He's in a cave with like a bunch of brown stuff. Like, he just overall looks very fancy. It looks like he's holding something. I'm not gonna say it's the best I've seen, but definitely is okay. I'm giving him a 5. Now it's your turn to look at it.

Joe: So, in addition to this painting, which I have printed out here, we also have— and this is a gift from Abram's grandparents, very much in the spirit of Rex Factor— they have provided us with the History of the Office of Prime Minister illustrated playing cards. And Robert Walpole, you will probably not be surprised to learn, is the ace of hearts.

Joe: "Regarded as the first prime minister by virtue of the previously unprecedented power he held and the manner in which he conducted his politics. This is despite his initial insistence that he was only the king's servant."

Joe: This is the same picture that we're looking at here. This is the common picture of him. Yeah, I agree.

Abram: He looks the same with me. Fancy, but some of them are better.

Joe: Yeah, he doesn't have his— yeah, his blue ribbon in this page, which I'm surprised about.

Abram: Yeah, I think that he looks fancy, but they could have done better, especially with the colors. It's very dark.

Joe: I'm wondering if this is earlier than the one that— the other one that we have that shows up with the blue ribbon. So how many points are you giving him?

Abram: I'm giving him 5.

Joe: Is this out of 10?

Abram: Out of 10, we'll divide by 2.

Joe: Out of 10, we'll divide by 2. Yeah, I think I'm only going 5 as well.

Abram: So that means he'll get 5 points. Okay. Lifespan. He lived to 68. So that'll be 6.8 too.

Joe: So for lifespan, just to be— just to make sure everybody knows, we're—

Abram: We're like, say that someone lived to 62, we're doing 6.2.

Joe: So we're giving them points just for being alive. We're so generous.

Abram: Because the better someone was, often that means they probably would have better healthcare, which means they'd probably live longer.

Joe: I don't think any of that is true, but I think for a rating system, it is perfectly fine. This is how we did it.

Joe: So Robert Walpole was born August 26th, 1676. He died March 18th, 1745. And as you say, that is a lifespan of 68 years. So he'll receive 6.8 points.

Joe: For his time in office, we're going to count Robert Walpole as having started on April 3rd, 1721. And ending on February 11th, 1742. That's going to be a total term of just a bit over 20 years, but we will give him a flat 20 points.

Abram: Okay. And now let's add the plus together. That's 82.8. So it would be 82.8 minus 24, which means he'd be 58.8.

Joe: Abram's math is, as usual, impeccable, and Robert Walpole's final score is indeed 58.8 points.

Abram: I expected him to do a bit better, but there was really no category he was very good in.

Joe: I don't know, I think he did a very good job of being interesting, and I think—

Abram: Yeah, I think it's that personality is bad, his painting was just meh. Math.

Joe: Do you agree— I think I agree.

Abram: I think those are the two main things dragging him down.

Joe: So, but Abram, we know that it's not just about the score.

Abram: We also have the question: known or ice cream cone?

Joe: I mean, he's the first prime minister.

Abram: He needs to get known. So will we get known or ice cream cone? I think known.

Joe: I think known as well. So we have our very first prime minister, our very first known, and most importantly of all, Robert Walpole can feel very proud that he managed to get a completely meaningless award on our podcast. Congratulations, Robert Walpole. You are our very first winner and our highest-scoring prime minister so far.

Abram: Uh-huh. He'll probably say it a lot. Very fancy, though.

Joe: I think he'll say it very fancy. So with that, we have now ended our third episode, or really our first episode.

Abram: The first episode that we do a ranking.

Joe: We don't have a website, we don't have any social media, you can't find us, but we will in the future. We probably will in the future, and if we do, we'll make sure to let you know. Thank you very much for listening to this episode. I've had a great fun researching Robert Walpole. I hope you've had some fun listening to us, and we'll talk to you soon.

Bibliography

Joe: Bibliography. Walpole had a famous quote, Abram. "Oh, do not read history, for that I know must be false." So maybe everything I just said was a lie. I hope it isn't.

Joe: But for anyone that's worried about that, I do want to say my bibliography for this session. Most of the material for this podcast came from two sources, primarily *The Great Man: Sir Robert Walpole, Scoundrel, Genius, and Britain's First Prime Minister* by Edward Pearce, written in 2007, and an older book, *Walpole*, by John Morley from 1889. The 1889 book is extremely biased, amazingly, but it has some wonderfully colorful stories. Whereas the Pearce book is tremendously boring, and the less I say about that, the better.

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